Saya
Skills Saya's species specializes in shaping and changing the bodies and minds of other lifeforms, using the powerful retrovirus their tentacles secrete to warp flesh and genetic code. She can do things such as turn one creature into an entirely different one, make cosmetic adjustments, heal or create internal injuries, or even rewire the neurons and synapses in someone's brain to give or take away mental illnesses. To do so, she must first learn the genetic code of what she wants to modify by consuming its DNA. For most humanoid species and animals, the simplest way to do so is to consume their semen. The more she's taken in, the better she'll know that creature, and therefore the more dramatic and precise her alterations can be. Being shaped by Saya is painful - tortuously so for large alterations - and can take anywhere from an hour to twenty hours of constant work depending on the scope. At the time she was pulled into Pandora, she has only mastered the DNA of humans and rats. Normally, her ability to mold others would go into overdrive once she consumed enough DNA from her target species in this case, causing her to become pregnant with spores. When they released, they would not only kill her, but rewrite the human genome in order to turn all intelligent life on the planet into members of her own race. However, Pandora took this "gift" away from her. Saya's flesh is reticulated rather than fibrous, as well as extremely tough. Inflicting slashing or piercing wounds on her - such as with blades or most guns - is pointless, as the wound will instantly seal itself. latter, however, will at least hurt her for that brief moment. Larger firearms and explosives can harm her, as it will take minutes or hours for her flesh to snap back instead of seconds. As a rule of thumb, once at least half of Saya's form is in pieces, she will be unable to heal fast enough and will die within minutes. Blunt force can hurt and temporarily injure her, but is not enough to finish her off. She's very vulnerable to extreme temperatures, especially cold. Being doused with liquid nitrogen means immediate death. In combat, Saya prefers stalking and subtly trapping her opponent to going out guns blazing. She's a master at moving unnoticed, and her usual strategy is to frighten her opponent into submission before actually making her move. When the time comes, she uses her tentacles to tie up and reel in her target, and then does whatever she needs to finish it off, be it devouring them immediately, snapping their neck, or snaking some tentacles inside of them to cause internal bleeding and injury. However, when face-to-face with someone, she's not a very skilled attacker, and tends to react with animalistic fear when another creature manages to scratch her. Saya's otherworldly form is fundamentally wrong. Before coming to Pandora, just imagining what she might look like was enough to cause someone to toe the line between sanity and madness, and directly looking at her would instantly break most minds beyond any hope of repair. This is no longer the case. Surviving an encounter her can still cause lingering hallucinations, instability, paranoia, and nightmares, but these now fade with time. Saya's grotesque everything is both a blessing and a curse; while it makes hunting and fostering fear easier, it also makes it almost impossible for her to interact with others mundanely or as anything but a predator. Saya is telepathic, allowing her to project speech into the minds of others so long as she maintains physical contact with them. She can secrete an acidic goo which burns through flesh and wood. She can cling to and walk along ceilings and walls. She cannot become tired or fatigued. Saya's intelligence and ability to absorb knowledge is far beyond human comprehension. She can process information and do math more quickly and efficiently than a supercompter. Anything she hears or reads, she absorbs, comprehends, and memorizes perfectly. Her knowledge of biology, human anatomy, and medical science is more vast than that of even her world's greatest geniuses, and that's after mere months of study. However, her absurd amounts of book knowledge don't make up for her inexperience and lack of street smarts, and she has jumped to false conclusions in the past due to over-thinking things. And she's a really good cook. This is a necessary skill for a horrible tentacle monster. Personality Above all else, Saya is innocent. This doesn't mean she's kind or benevolent; it means she does not comprehend the difference between good and evil. She is a remorseless murderer and rapist who, generally speaking, sees humans as nothing more than food and canvases for experimentation. And as far as she knows, there's nothing wrong with that. She harbors no innate malevolence or malice; in fact, she thinks Earthlings are funny, interesting little creatures. She merely acts on her species' predatory insincts, doing what she's always done to survive. She's an anomality among her kind in that she's become rather similar to the species she was supposed to conquer - human beings, in this case. Saya can feel the full spectrum of human emotion, and has shockingly relatable thoughts and feelings for a tentacle monster. She craves love and companionship more than anything, and being so starved for it has made her desperate. When Saya manages to bond with someone - an exceedingly rare occurance, given her horrific form - she becomes affectionate, playful, and sweet, eager to do anything to please the object of her affections. Saya has developed a mean, often cruel sense of humor. Clever pranks, snark, and deception amuse her, and she enjoys watching as others become confused or scared. She likes to toy with her prey, ensnaring them slowly and then torturing them just because she can. She thinks agony and terror are adorable, and nothing makes her laugh quite like desperate screams. Against those who've personally wronged or offended her, Saya becomes especially brutal and monstrous, savoring every single moment of drawn-out suffering. Saya's general temperament is similar to that of a whimsical, mischevious young girl. She's excitable when it comes to thinks she enjoys, and is at her happiest when she feels like she's done well at a task or been useful to someone she cares about. In fact, she's pretty easily amused by little things and jokes. She's prone to sulking and pouting when upset. However, despite her childishness, Saya possesses a keen intellect, a sharp eye, and quite a bit of maturity when it counts. In a way, acting young is a defense mechanism for her - by acting shallow and overly-playful, she conceals her deeper insecurities and worries about being alone in a world where she doesn't truly belong. She needs to hide her loneliness from herself; doing so is the only thing that keeps her together. Saya is intense when riled up or deeply invested in something. Fuminori described Saya's love as a fire - raging, passionate, and warm, but with the potential to utterly destroy everything around it. Her desires are selfish, revolving around herself and the few people she cares about, and she doesn't care who they have to hurt or destroy for their own happiness. She may do horrible things to others, but when they return the favor and do the same to her, Saya reacts much like a confused, frightened child who can't understand how anyone could ever be so cruel. Saya has an endless thirst for knowledge, and is extremely curious. She loves to tinker and experiment with the things - and lifeforms - around her. She has an artistic streak, which she primarily expresses by fleshcrafting rats into otherworldly, angelic creatures. She enjoys reading, with a preference for romance novels and medical journals. Appearance Saya does not resemble a black-haired little girl unless you have a specific mental illness. Rather, Saya is a shapeless, featureless mass of brown slime, perpetually rotting flesh, and hundreds upon hundreds of writhing, shifting tentacles. Her size varies; depending on her needs she can be anywhere from an inch tall to roughly five feet tall, and she does not have a "default" size or shape. Her tentacles can change size, shape, and length as well, ranging from countless thin threads to large, heavy things. She secretes a rancid green slime, which leaves a trail behind her and often becomes caked in places where she's lingered, imbuing the area with a sickening smell. Relationships History There is a race of creatures that exists to increase their numbers by hijacking other races. They scatter their young across universes and worlds in search of intelligent life..and if they find it, they transform it into copies of themselves, assimilating the useful parts of their psychology, technology, and culture along the way. Dr. Ougai, an occultist, accidentally called upon these creatures when he made contact with another dimension. Seeing this as a sign that Earth had a species worth assilmiliating, they dropped one of the infant monstrosities into that world, under the Doctor's care. The creature showed a seemingly endless thirst for knowledge, learning everything it could about humanity and Earth for when it took them over. However, it took it's lessons abnormally close to heart, over time gaining emotions, independent thoughts, and a sense of self. Eventually, it focused its education on reproduction. It learned that the DNA of most Earth creatures - and therefore, the key to completing its mission - was contained in semen. Since it required that, it recognized itself as not an "it," but a "she." By reading romance books and depictions of love, she also learned that humans link sex with love, and came to the false conclusion that it was a necessary part of the reproductive process. Therefore, falling in love with someone who loved her back became her greatest desire. After a year with the creature, Dr. Ougai gave her a name as a birthday present: Saya, after his mother's cat, who shared her playful, curious nature. Soon after this, he disappeared, locking himself in his basement vault with all his occult artifacts and research, wishing to die alone with his findings so that no one else could ever surpass him. Now abandoned, Saya eventually began lurking in the hospital the Doctor once worked. She mostly preyed upon and played with small animals, and kept herself busy by sneaking into the rooms of mentally ill patients at night and frightening them. However, with the doctor gone, she had no one who she could truly interact with, and she feared no one would ever show her kindness again. One night, while stalking through the hospital rooms, she decided to terrorize a new patient – Fuminori Sakisaka, who had just received an experimental brain surgery with unknown side effects. However, when she revealed herself to him, he reacted not with fear, but with awe and wonder, as if he were gazing upon an angel. Though shocked by his reaction, Saya stayed by his side to chat, and the two quickly developed a deep bond. From then on, Saya visited Fuminori nightly. Fuminori's surgery had warped all five of his senses, causing the world and everyone in it to look, sound, and smell like rotting flesh and gore. With these warped senses, horrible things, such as Saya, appeared normal. Unwilling to be a lab rat due to his condition, he hid it from everyone but Saya, pretending as if everything were fine. Eventually, he was released from the hospital, and took Saya home with him. With Saya isolated by her form and Fuminori isolated by his illness, the two became each other's entire world. Soon, they became lovers. According to Saya's lessons on humanity, this meant they could now breed, returning Saya to her original goal of assimilating and conquering Earth. One afternoon, while Fuminori was still out running errands, one of his former friends came by to investigate his strange, increasingly cruel and antisocial behavior since the accident. To Saya, this was simply easy prey. She lured the woman into the house, killed her, and ate her innards. Fumimori returned home in the middle of Saya's meal and caught her in the act. He asked her for a taste, which she hesitantly gave him. Thanks to his twisted senses, he enjoyed it. Some time later, Saya attempted an experiment. Since Fuminori's disease made him love her and think her the most beautiful thing alive, she figured that if she inflicted the same brain damage on other people, they would be kind to her as well. She snuck into the home of Fuminori's neighbor Yusuke, captured him, and crafted his brain to copy Fuminori's illness. The experiment was a success. However, waking up and finding himself in a horrible world of writhing flesh and organs immediately drove the formerly mild-mannered man violently mad. He murdered his wife and daughter, then encountered Saya waiting for him. Like Fuminori, he was captivated by what he believed to be her ethereal beauty. Unlike Fuminori, he was overcome with desire to dominate and own the only pure thing in his grotesque new world. He raped her. Fuminori arrived during the act and killed Yusuke. While Fuminori comforted the crying, terrified Saya, she revealed her ability to warp and change living creatures. Afterwards, she told him she could fix his illness if he wanted, allowing him to live a normal life. However, he refused. He now knew Saya wasn't human, and would rather give up the whole world than see her as an abomination. They then ate Yusuke, and took his wife and daughter's bodies home to eat later. Later that night, Fuminori told Saya he was going to go away for a few days to chase down Dr. Ougai, so that he could learn more about what Saya truly is. Once he left, Saya made it her mission to get rid of Yoh, a classmate of Fuminori's who had confessed her love for him. Even though Fuminori rejected her harshly, Saya saw the girl as a thief for encroaching on her lover. Saya used the cell phone of the woman she'd murdered before to lure Yoh into the house, then captured her. She raped her, broke her mind, and spent twenty hours rotting and melting her body into a form similar to her own. It was meant to be the ultimate torment; she would live as their pet, forced to watch as Fuminori loved Saya and not her. When Fuminori returned, Saya gave him Yoh as a gift. Later that evening, Saya was pulled into Pandora. Pandora History